Borderlands
by Poecilia
Summary: Persona 4. Three weeks after the very bad ending, Kanji and Naoto try to make their way through a far more dangerous new world.
1. Invitation

Disclaimer: Persona characters and settings belong to Atlus. This is a work of fanfiction, shared without profit or intent of copyright infringement.

SPOILERS alert: the worst ending, the true ending, dungeons and max social links for Kanji and Naoto, previous installments in the Persona series, and probably other random spoilers that I'm forgetting to mention now.

* * *

The dark that crept from the corners of the dining room seemed to soften, as it approached the glow of the fireplace. Softened by the deep red velvet of the armchairs, the deep red textured wallpaper, and matte varnished dark wood furniture and floor. Softened to something more like a mother's embrace after a nightmare, than a sinister enemy. Through the right lenses, firelight and shadows alike would not be softened by the fog that filled the room-- but that was the limit of its range. Even wearing Teddy's glasses, Naoto could see how the sky loomed beyond the frosty windows, like a mold growth: white fog, pocked by fuzzy black spots that were Shadows.

April afternoons just weren't the same, anymore.

Kanji gulped down pyramids of tiny sandwiches, slabs of cake, banded cliffs of plain biscuits and black caviar and pate— all the while seeming to breathe but barely, and wasting not a moment to set anything down on his own plate. He washed it all down again with a cup of now-lukewarm tea.

One square of buttered bread lay on Naoto's plate, and it had been lying there for almost half an hour. Her tea had cooled by now as well, but she brought it up to ripple the surface with her breath, and set the cup back down on its saucer with a dull tap. "Feel better?"

"No—" The syllable came out like a growl. Kanji gulped and tried again. "I'm just warm and toasty here when it's hella cold outside, and full up now when I've been starving for days, but no, I don't feel better."

Naoto cast her gaze down for a moment. For the next, she jerked up and reached for the teapot, mumbling, "You should take care to be adequately hydrated as well as nourished," as she poured him another cup.

Kanji toyed with his last sandwich, waiting until she sat back down. "You want something?"

Naoto gave a slow, disdainful blink. "You left us. You just up and left, and Rise advised us to give you space to grieve, but-- then-- we couldn't find you! After all we've been through—!"

Kanji rose, toppling his chair behind him. "We ain't ever been through that! You ain't ever been through… getting trash-talked by the first person you thought ever believed in you, failing to save them! Nanako-chan went better'n my mom—"

"That was your mother's shadow. That's what the fog does, it brings out the worst in people, it creates an intemperate body of everything they rightly refuse to admit." _Memories. A child's fearful whimper for her Big Bro, a grown man's wide bloodshot eyes and pleas to make it all stop…_ Naoto dismissed them with a frown, focused on reciting her next point. "What your mother chose to do as a lucid, whole person, that shows that she loved you. You should remember her that way, not as she was under the influence of such an illness. Kanji…"

He paced the room, twisting his fingers in his hair, saying, "I had to bash her skull in. The things she-- it-- said. The things sh-- _it _was going to do, I had to. But she was still in there, I know it! Her eyes, Naoto! She didn't want to die!"

"Kanji, it's imperative that... I need you to get it together, I have something important to... Right _now_, listen to me, damn it!" She stood, slamming both her palms on the table.

Kanji righted his chair and sank back down. Naoto turned away from him before she allowed herself to wince, massaging her wrists as she ambled up to the world map tacked up on the wall. "My grandfather has arranged for me to leave Inaba."

"With the quarantine? Good for you."

"If you're implying that I pulled strings to have the quarantine lifted for me, I didn't." Naoto glared at him. "It was my-- my grandfather who... attempted this, but, the most he could manage was to pinpoint a section of the town's border with slightly lax security. He's strongly suggested that I break through it and come back home."

"How 'laxed?" Kanji leaned forward. "How many can we smuggle over?"

Naoto shook her head. "That was not what I had in mind."

She pointed out clusters of push-pins on the map. "According to my sources, these red pins show the where else this particular fog phenomena have occurred. Sri Lanka. New Zealand. Cuba. Manhattan. Ireland. Madagascar. Citizens suffered the effects in the space of a few weeks, whereas residents of Inaba had a little more than three months to begin feeling them. From these locations…" she hovered a splayed palm over the sprawls of orange and yellow push-pins, "… it spread."

Kanji swore. "So there is no safe place."

"There are many regions of the world yet untouched by the fog, indeed, even a few parts of Japan, but there is no guarantee that they shall remain so. This fog doesn't move with the wind, or really any other meteorological influence that would determine the formation and movement of normal fog." Naoto shifted her weight, leaned one hand on her hip, and continued. "From what I've seen, Persona-users have an innate resistance to the more grievous effects. There may be no safe places, but there may be safe people."

"If everyone else turns into shadows, though? Might be safer to be not safe." He lowered his voice, "Less painful."

Naoto sighed. "Of course it's our duty, as people with an innate immunity, to keep others from succumbing to the fog. Without our leader or Teddy, with the stakes and scope getting higher and wider, I believe we have been doing… quite well—"

Kanji snorted.

"—under the circumstances."

"You know what I was doing really well? I'll get back to it. Thanks for the biscuits, and all that damn depressing news." He rose again, shrugged his jacket on, and left the room.

Naoto strode after him, her voice resonating through the empty mansion. "Avoiding your friends? Living out on the street, waiting to freeze to death, or for Shadows to expunge you? In this town, that's hardly a unique accomplishment." She overtook him, blocked his path. "I was about to tell you how the circumstances have changed. Would you not work that to its best advantage?"

"Outta my way."

"You're better than that, Kanji, you know you can do so much more--"

"…hell are you talking about?" He raged, "It's too late! I don't care!"

She set her jaw, unflinching. "We could see Souji again."

Their noises had lured a few Shadows to press against the windows and claw off the frost or scuttle the tips of their fingers under the door. These were gross concepts of fingers, sticky against whatever they touched-- and with an undetectable sigh somehow coming off their pores that gave an aura of dread. The thick fog made them tamer, however, and in Kanji's revelatory silence, their attentions waned and retreated.

"Souji?" Kanji shook his head, trying to shake off hope. "No. Come on."

She pursed her lips, thinking of what else to say to convince him. "Do you remember that Yosuke left before the quarantine, because his family was to manage a new Junes branch overseas? I was surprised to find out the specifics, that he'd settled in a town quite close to the Shirogane estates in the Pennines. Still, such a small promise of a continued investigation could not tempt me, when our collective efforts seemed far more urgently needed here. Then, Souji--"

"-- is moving there, too?"

"Indeed. I don't believe in fate, but this… the scales have tipped, now; I must go." Naoto hesitated. "But I shouldn't, alone. It was a close scrape, just trawling this area for you. My sources reported Shadows migrating ahead of the fog's movement, becoming more aggressive. Heads of state and civilians alike, being driven by fear... riots, massacres, quite an increase in violent cult activity--"

"Why didn't you ask the others?"

"They're the first ones I asked. They refused."

Perhaps she had begun wrong. Chie had yelled a lot, and called her a coward for abandoning them. It was an insult, she continued, to bring them all down to her level as a deserter-- as if it wasn't enough to be brought down to murderers. At that, Naoto had retaliated with all the vicious honesty that comes over people who are angry, honesty that usually ought to be denied and covered up later.

Rise tried to get between them, to calm them both down. In the joint vituperations that it earned her, however, she could only turn away to bawl like a child. When they had all been shouted and cried out, Yukiko cast her gaze downwards sadly, and whispered that she was sorry, but she would never leave. That had settled it.

They had walked away, the three of them, shoulder to shoulder. Like girls commonly do, they'd made it clear to Naoto that whether she actually left or not, they would never speak with her again.

Naoto shrugged. "This is their home."

"Home," Kanji repeated. He wanted to laugh. He wanted to hit something. This small town, full of small minds and their wounding habits, was somebody else's home. Meanwhile, his dad, his mom, his best friend-- everyone who could have made it merely bearable, seemed to keep leaving him. The void they left, only filling with monsters. "They can't leave their home. Damn, I wish I had that problem. I wish."

Naoto gave a curt nod. "We should pack lightly, and leave as soon as we can. How long will you need to get your strength back?"

"Ready for anything, any time," he mumbled, with the bruise-gray bags under his eyes, and his low blood sugar tilting him a few almost imperceptible degrees off-balance.

"Mm. I should take that time to brief you more thoroughly on the dangers, plans, backup plans..." She moved past him, back towards the dining room. "I've laid out a couple of futons, in my grandfather's study and the room annexed. We do have guest bedrooms, but if the Shadows become aggressive enough and break in, the study is more defensible..."

"Sounds good," said Kanji, fumbling his hand in his jacket pocket. At last he unfolded his glasses, slipped them on, and followed her.


	2. Escape

The ballpen moved so swiftly over the page that the words almost splashed on. Kanji caught the title, _Antipathy Syndrome_, with a sideways glance, but the rest of the text followed with only occasional clarity:

… _afflicting those who have had prolonged exposure to toxic fog, and insufficient psychological integration... _

_Initial symptoms vary from person to person... euphoria, which soon degenerates into what appears to be incapacitating fatigue... unconsciousness, loss of vitality, aphasia, mental decline… second stage is characterized by seizures of growing violence._

Naoto seemed too engrossed in her report to appreciate her place by the window. The crescent moon shone clearly: there was no toxic fog between Tokyo and New York. Kanji, between her and the aisle, shifted in the hold of the velvety overly perfumed upholstery, to stretch out the cramp under his shoulder blade. "Dangers, you said. Tch! That wasn't so hard."

Naoto raised an eyebrow at him. "I beg to differ, but it's good to know that you have so much confidence."

"What, that part with the..." at a loss for words, he did a sort of interpretive dance in his seat, acting out what had transpired. Wide-range frequency, low-volume sound effects accompanied the pantomime like a deranged beatbox. It was a very elaborate performance.

"You just had to be there, one of those things," said Naoto to a puzzled passenger across the aisle from him. Quickly, the passenger returned to watching the in-flight movie with exaggerated nonchalance, as Kanji reached the final victorious crescendo.

"…Yeah!! That was nothing."

_Prolonged seizures alone risk physical ... but also the danger inherent in a specific type of Shadow's incubation period coming to an end. The Shadow emerges, distinguished from unattached free-floating Shadows as it's characterized by... _

"Oh, no, that last--" here Naoto did a dispirited imitation of one of his more frequent sound effects, "--was certainly something. I looked out, and was sure you were dead. That, and the pressure of decrypting such a mechanism in the time I was given, must never be spoken of again."

"It only got really fun 'cause those DNA things and the samurai Shadows came in—"

"Never again."

_...sustained by the patient's original body, but the Shadow-double moves to sustain itself by preying on the unintegrated minds of others. ...results in a rapid onset of Antipathy Syndrome in a tragically wide scope, as the subsequent victims' Shadow-doubles are forced out..._

The scream of the wind and the engine outside, muffled by the airplane walls that curved like they were inside a capsule, continued. Somewhere behind them, a baby began to cry. The collective mood of making it out of a plague-infested country was too conflicted for Kanji to wonder at for too long. Some passengers seemed relieved, others ashamed, others still seemed afraid of what the future held, one or two even seemed in a beautiful world of their own where this was just a casual vacation. Unless they drew attention, nobody seemed _too_ interested in some other stranger's plight. Kanji figured, he ought to stop with the re-enactments, but that it ought to be okay to talk.

"Lucky your friend didn't ask any questions." _You'd think a cop would wonder about how we found him in his car, in the fog, so quiet and quick like._ He scratched his jaw, and murmured, "Then again, if he regularly drives people who oughta be in quarantine, into a big city--"

"Officer Kurosawa isn't a friend. He intentionally withheld and misrepresented certain information when my grandfather was on commission in the Bay Area." She flipped the pages of her notebook back to examine some other notes, encircle and link them. "He sold weapons-- including firearms and rocket launchers-- to unlicensed, civilian minors. My grandfather decided not to report this to his superiors, and instead let Kurosawa owe him a favor."

"Hey, _we_ bought weapons…"

"We bought shoes, fans, and bathtub lids. And I have a license for my gun." She had it now strapped to her lower leg, under her blue plaid trousers. Security seemed far more concerned about screening illness. "Before any of this, what might people our age have wanted a rocket launcher for?"

Kanji let all that sink in, and made an uncertain sound.

"My sentiments exactly. Kurosawa's services and information are proving invaluable at this time, but..." She moved some papers from the front of the notebook to a pocket at the back, and paused. "The more I find out about my grandfather, the more afraid I become that I'll come home to someone I hardly know anymore. What do you make of that?"

He thought to mention that they'd been hiding things from everyone else, and done some things that weren't exactly noble, too, but instead he said, "He'll be alive."

Naoto seemed to startle back a bit at his gruffness. "O-of course... how foolishly insensitive of me. I apologize." She continued her writing, seeming to close herself off.

_If the patient's original body experiences a premature cessation of vital functions, however, the Shadow-double will dissolve before it executes the behavior described above. The process involving Persona, by which the Shadow-double is weakened and negotiated with, is preferable, but_

_"_I get it, okay?" said Kanji. "There's only so far you can go, and, y'know, still be yourself. Some things, you do them-- and suddenly can only think of yourself as 'the person who did that,' and you know you're lost, right?"

The pen halted.

"Watch out for it happening in other people, and that might save you a lot of grief, but the way I see it? Your grandpa's going that far, doing everything he can for you. That's the kind of person you're coming home to."

"He had Kurosawa indebted to him before I needed it. He didn't do _that_ for me. I just-- I just _thought_ that I knew every detail about how he works." She let out a long breath, trying to compose herself. "I grew up in his study."

"You can keep growing up," he said, "'S not like any of us are really done with that."

"I'm done." Naoto closed her eyes, pinched the bridge of her nose, and moaned. "I _am_. Why can't it show? My hair should be turning white."

"You can't pull that look off."

That got a surprised chuckle from her. It only lasted a moment, and the smile didn't quite reach her eyes, but for that moment Kanji felt the fog-filled world brighten. He'd fought, that day, and won something worth winning. They had a direction. They had hope.

Naoto continued, "Rise once told me that I shouldn't think doing everything alone is the grown-up thing to do. My grandfather concurred. I concurred, eventually, accepting that nobody could really live in a vacuum. Yet, such a compromise of principles for the sake of… I don't even know what for…"

"He must've had a good reason…" Kanji began, but he'd never met Naoto's grandfather, so he trailed off. The mention of Rise sparked another line of thought: "I wonder how the girls are doing without us."

Naoto seemed relieved that he'd changed the subject. "Tactically, they have a greater advantage than we do. Yukiko-senpai is a healer as well as a magic-user, after all. Rise's unique ability--"

"But that's talkin' like they could summon their Personas… we _can't_ summon our Personas."

"Then Chie-senpai's martial discipline would serve them well until they figure out how to do so." Naoto pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and turned to look at him. "I need to believe that every world can still make some kind of sense. That we have otherworldly fog, and otherworldly shadows, imposing themselves upon this world— even Shadow-doubles, but no way to project a Persona outside of ourselves? Why the exception?"

"Rules won't hold up just because we want it to," said Kanji, doubtfully. "Maybe the world's just gone crazy."

Naoto _tsked_ impatiently. "Well, _that_ leaves room for discussion. Not at all defeatist, is it? I've only gotten so far in my line of work by pursuing what I knew to be true, no matter what everybody else wished it were instead. If I tell myself that it doesn't matter if nothing makes sense, I'd be lying to myself. That's when I'd truly be lost. _What._"

"What?" echoed Kanji.

"You're looking at me."

"I— um. You were talking. I _heard_ it was polite to look at people who're talking to you…" He turned away like he was sulking, but he did it to hide the reddening of his cheeks, hoping that she'd let slide whatever his facial expression had just betrayed.

Kanji could hear her snapping the tray table back into place, capping the pen, and packing the notebook back in their bag.

"I must be tired. I'm sorry," she said. "I mean… thank you. For putting up with me so far, that is. You've had the hardest time out of all of us, and I'm obviously not the most comforting person with whom to partner."

He huffed with relief.

"…Good night."

_What am I doing?_ He wondered, risking a glance back at Naoto. She was slipping the eyelid-like airplane window-cover down, blocking out the moon. _Letting us both go on pretending that we're strong, like this, it ain't what I promised Senpai…_

_

* * *

  
_

"… from now on I got two rules: Rule one! Be myself. Rule two! Get people to understand me," he'd declared. Souji-senpai had smiled so proudly back at him...

Rise had cleared that up, even if she hadn't meant to. It was the day Kanji showed her the dolls he'd made. "You? Really?? That's…" she chirruped, smile frozen, "… kind of creepy."

That was when he realized that he couldn't block everyone out. He couldn't block Rise out, or even parts of Rise. She was his friend, and he'd never dreamed that he'd be comfortable enough to be friends with someone so girlish. Rise pretended to cry to get her way, and sincerely cried at the slightest things, and giggled, and had a phenomenal memory for gossip. Everything that Kanji hated, somehow combined to make up the first person he could open up to.

And rely on. When she had heard (from Yosuke, who heard it from Chie, who heard it from Yukiko, who overheard Souji being told) that Naoto fed all shoe-locker love letters, unopened, to the shredder-- Rise had given it to him straight. So to speak.

"Naoto's bad for you!" she'd exclaimed. "Yeah, she'd work and fight beyond her limits for anyone who needs her, but, her heart is cold! I don't want you getting hurt…"

"Y'know," he'd said, as he finger-combed his hair, trying to act casual. "I heard those first and last sentences said a lot about _me_. By girls' parents, sometimes even their _grandparents_…"

"But _you're_ a big ol' softie who'd get all insecure about that, and bring it up for _months_ after the fact, while _she'd_ take it as a compliment. So." She clapped her hands. "You're gonna join me now for a steak-croquette pig out, forget you ever liked her that way, and tomorrow follow my plan to get the ball rolling between you and Nagase Daisuke."

He almost fell over. "Wha—?? H-hey… that ain't funny…"

"I happen to take my perceptive skills very seriously, thanks. In or out of the TV." Rise winked at him. "I think it's gonna be a healthy rebound-fling for _both_ of you. You're _sure_ to get your doubts cleared. Naoto-chan will only confuse you more, the way she is now…"

Yes. Rise was the only one he'd confessed his doubts to with any detail. Souji eventually overtook Rise's status as _best_ friend, but there were some things that would be awkward to talk with Souji about. For everything about her that annoyed him, Rise's insight and understanding had no boundaries. Even at that moment, Kanji hadn't regretted confiding in her.

Kanji had, however, violently opposed Operation Shonen-ai ...preferring to remain in doubt, yearning for the unattainable_._

_

* * *

  
_

Naoto confused him, the way she was now: with the hat tipped over her eyes, so that and her dark hair and the airplane blanket framed her mouth and a bit of her nose. Asleep. Kanji looked on, without the excuse of that she was talking. He thought about his rules.

_How the hell can I be myself, with her, when I ain't even figured out _what_ I am when it comes to this? How can I try to get her to understand, when even I don't— and if I try to explain, when I'm this confused, maybe she'll only understand enough to wanna push _me_ into a shredder. _

Back when things were (more or less,) normal, Kanji would have recognized this for the weak, fearful excuse that it was._ She'd just be protecting herself, like I used to do. _

_But the world's going to hell, and right now, we've only got each other. I can't risk her getting freaked._ _I ought to just stop this stupid schoolyard crush, right now. _He faced forward, resolute. _But... s__he'd found her reason to go on, when I thought I'd lost mine. I admire her, for that. I can't help it.  
_

_

* * *

  
_

**A/N:** Should have warned everyone earlier that this wasn't going to be an adventure. I don't like writing action sequences. :0


	3. Checkpoint

**A/N**: Just pretend that the P4 universe uses airplane models with detachable doors well into 2012, cockpits are easy to break into, and they allow guns in carry-on luggage. Erm, and any mistakes with describing basic physics are my fault, not Naoto's. Thanks so much for the encouraging reviews so far! Wishing you a happy Valentine's Day with this portrayal of utter despair of isolation! :D

* * *

Dreams annoyed Naoto, the way the shift in consciousness reduced her from a person to a function: they made her blank out the rational processing that was as dear to her as her own pulse, made her— not even an observer, but observation. This dream began as a collage of memories.

Souji had such a brilliant mind. He came to solutions, when presented with physical evidence, almost as quickly as she did. His perspective made a better dynamic —that had jolted her, as if she'd only known a piano to be played with one finger and then discovered chords. He was extraordinarily perceptive in matters beyond that, and on such matters, she'd finally consulted with him. _"Why is that, compared to the time I spent utterly alone… I worry more now that I'm with you and the others?"_

"Push the bastard in." Strong words, but Souji sounded more resigned than angry. He wasn't really a leader, she observed, but conducted such perfect harmony with whatever skills and ideas each member would contribute. But what of himself? In this memory, his face betrayed a hint of something bothering him, but he would not lead it to light.

"Wh-What's gotten into you guys!?" Chie stamped forward. "This is crazy! How can we do something like that!? Do you really understand what you're about to do...?"

Naoto had not understood, indeed, she hadn't even listened. Too late to do anything about that, though—it was a memory; and Naoto would do nothing different about that, because she didn't know that this was a dream. So, she observed herself: how a dark resolve came over the tiny boyish figure in the hospital room, that night. And now, transforming her into the object of her own nightmare…

The scene changed again to that day at Junes. Naoto clutched at her ballpoint pen, feeling the cap dig into her finger, opening a memory within a memory: the blissful focus of making her ideas into something she could hold— first with blueprints, then the coldness of the screwdriver tine against the moistening skin of her fingers, bevel locking into place… finally, the satisfaction of all the pieces fitting together. That was happiness.

That was loneliness. She could only recognize it in hindsight of her experiences with the team, and her partnership with Souji. But this can't be right, she'd thought. There are facts. Things that do not change with perception. If the words _Who needs friends? This is awesome!_ had crossed 8-year-old Naoko's mind in all sincerity— and they had— then it was a fact that she enjoyed tinkering with her detective's tools. Yet, she felt the truth of both judgments. How could that be? Which one was it that was true?

It was her. _"I feel that… I'm undergoing a change."_

_It was neither,_ she thought, beginning to wake up a bit. The images and sensations of the memories continued to wrap her, vivid and unbidden— but she remembered enough, now, to know them for what they were. _That memory of building my own tools, by myself, from my own blueprints—that was integrity. The vulnerability I showed, that turned the tide to the choices I would make… was folly, was foolishness…_

That night at the hospital. Chie had resigned herself, too. Harmony trumps perfection. "I won't be the only one to walk out on this… I'd only suffer more that way."

_No! Walk out! Show us, warn us that there's a border there— a border, beyond which we'd be lost— 'the people who did that.' It will change all of us…_

("Don't be afraid.")

_...this isn't bravery._ And after that, her consciousness shifted again so that it was a dream like any other.

_This isn't bravery,_ she observed. _Seven against one frail man who didn't really seem to process what was going on?_ "Help… make it stop," Namatame mouthed, seeming to forget about putting any air behind his voice. His head lolled to the side so he looked straight through Naoto. "It's not me…"

She struck his cheek with the heel of her hand, snapping his repulsive gaze away from her. They would follow through, and there could be no room for doubt. Together, they could do anything. (Even if it was wrong.) Together, they were fearless.

"_I see. I'm afraid, you say… I see."_ A new perspective, a better dynamic. Souji had struck a chord. She loosened her grip on the ballpen, the tension lifting from her. _"The need to change, and the desire to remain the same. They're mixed together… and it scares me."_

A train slipped through the tendrils of fog and into the night. Souji didn't even wave goodbye. Yosuke hadn't been the one to tell her that he was in England. Teddy's letter. Kanji's running. Three girls, walking shoulder to shoulder away from her. Each vision tightened a peg somewhere inside her, her hope fraught almost to snapping. United, they were fearless. They were united no longer.

"Why?" Her Shadow-double's childishly high voice cracked at the syllable. The lab coat's sleeves were too long for her arms, and they flailed in the air as the Shadow wiped its own tears. "Why are you leaving me here!? Why am I always left alone!? It's so lonely… I don't wanna be alone!"

"You wear the same face as me," said Naoto herself, "It's as if you're implying that we're the same. But the difference between you and me is…"

Her Shadow should have interrupted, at this moment.

"Is?" the Shadow-double prompted, wide-eyed and curious. "The difference between you and me is…?"

"…that I know it's not worth it," Naoto finished, "to not be lonely anymore. You lose them, anyway. You lose yourself."

* * *

Naoto opened her eyes to the dark under her hat. In a flash, she thought, _That was just a dream. Just a release of emotional turmoil, that was all. Emotional, not rational, so it wasn't true. Why do I still hear crying and screaming?_ She took a breath, to release the panicked clenching in her chest and steady some inward vertiginous tilt; reached up to straighten her hat, and continued her line of thought. _Sustaining the courage to reach out to others will guarantee that my Shadow-double need not ever manifest again. Recall and confirm the successes reaped from this philosophy: Kanji, for example—_

— was gone.

She stared at the empty seat beside her, then flicked her gaze up to the plastic oxygen masks that had popped out of the compartments above, and finally over to the frazzled flight attendants who were shouting out what might have been instructions. Naoto couldn't hear what those instructions were, for the screams of panicked passengers drowned them out. Some passengers were strapping on life vests, others pulling the oxygen masks towards their faces, and too many chose to push their way through the crush of other passengers who'd moved into— and blocked— the aisles as they tried to escape.

And Kanji was gone.

_What did I miss?_ She tried to focus her thoughts, but the despair of the empty seat and the world capsizing dissolved her efforts. A deeper certainty took over, one that said, _They all put you away when they're done. It's not worth it._

_

* * *

  
_

All but two of the passengers moved up the long carpet, through the angled tunnel of blocks of off-white walls, in a trembling sort of daze. The situation was difficult enough, but they had witnessed things that their minds denied as impossible. It seemed, that it would take some time to forget, and would help if they took the real, normal, world in… slowly.

Kanji sped up his swagger, to catch up. "Hey. You wanna talk about what happened back there?"

"No." A shoe print patterned the slightly squashed navy blue hat. Naoto clutched the strap of their bag, looking hunted.

"I don't mean the Shadow, I mean before, when you were just gawkin'—"

"_No._"

"'kay."

"Look. Heat-sensing cameras." Naoto nudged her chin in the direction of the objects in question.

"But fog and shadows don't cause fever."

"At times like this, governments should take every precaution. I see," she said, as they came to the end of the tunnel, "They _are_ taking every precaution." Men in jet-black suits swarmed the area, hovering over the shoulders of the airport employees, with the full conspicuousness of people taught how to be inconspicuous.

The passengers lined up in front of some counters, to hand over their tickets and passports, and answer questions pertaining to their purpose of visitation ("Just a stopover," said Naoto smoothly,) if they had any criminal record ("Uhh…" began Kanji, fidgeting a bit,) precisely which area of Japan had they come from, if they both had a doctor's certificate saying that they were healthy, and just in case would they please proceed to the airport clinic anyway…

"Honestly!" Naoto huffed.

"'S all good. Some of us got pretty badly beat up back there, y'know." Catching her glare, he rubbed his lower back and muttered, "I mean me… shoulda lifted from the knees…"

"Could you be less subtle with your pity?" She walked a little faster.

"Come on, don't be like that—"

"I am like that: useless! Just say it already!"

"Huh." He crossed his arms. "Hey, have you seen my friend around? Cocky bastard, low bullshit tolerance, name of Naoto? I _miss_ him. Who are you?"

She turned from blushing and furious to pale and subdued, which was not the reaction that Kanji was aiming for.

* * *

_It's not worth it._ If only she could make it all a dream, reduce herself to a mere observer... let this be someone else's story to carry, for once, let her curl up in a little cave inside herself. Let it all be over soon…

"Shirogane! Get your skinny ass down here!" Kanji roared, pushing against the flow of the panicked crowd in the airplane aisle. He could see her, she must have heard him, and yet… "Naoto? Naoto! Aw, _shit_—"

Kanji reached her, snapped his fingers in her unresponsive face, grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her and yelled, then finally caught her up under her arms like a doll and barreled up the aisle again. At that last effort, Naoto's outrage from years of being small in stature and often bullied for it, flared up once more, breaking through her precious foggy peace. She tried to twist around; the movement knocked her hat off, but she didn't seem to notice. "Unhand me! I am not any kind of _toy_!"

"Coulda fooled me," Kanji grunted, swinging her over his shoulder, one warm hand against the back of her knee.

She screamed her frustrations into the sweat at the back of his shirt. "Ugh! You're like some kind of cave-man!"

"Hey! If you'd just snapped out of it and come over when I yelled for you like any damn civilized—"

They continued like this until Kanji broke through the crowd and into the area that everyone had fled from. He let Naoto slide off him, then pointed to the in-flight movie screen up front— or rather, what pushed through it— and said, "Ugga?"

A bird's head and a bit of its wing pushed through the screen. It was such a great size that the rest of it couldn't follow, and the in-flight movie screen rippled as it struggled. It raised its head, an old-fashioned lamp in its beak, and glared at them with an amber eye the size of a basketball. Its iris was ringed like an old slice of onion.

Naoto gasped. "A Shadow…"

"A strong one. I got a pretty critical hit in, that bought some time, but I couldn't go all-out on my own barehanded… well… it's recovered now. Got any magic gems?"

They did— in their bag, back in their seats, along with their medicine. She cursed herself for her stupidity-- Souji would never be that careless-- and her mind raced, focused now according to her own command. "The door of the emergency exit up front. Bring it here, and we might just have an even battle."

"I can do that?"

"The cabin's been depressurized, hasn't it? If this plane is an old version of the 737 like I think it is— just, go! I'll distract it!" Naoto pulled her revolver from its holster, and took a shot at the Shadow. At that moment the plane dipped, the shot missed wide, and she stumbled.

The Shadow gave a victorious caw, and a wound of lightning crackled in the air around her.

* * *

The clinic area was white as lightning. It gave the tiny room an airier, more expansive feel, but still, the gurneys and the curtain-separators and the smell of antiseptic made Kanji uneasy. He hated hospitals, and everything that reminded him of hospitals. Except, he remembered, that one time when Teddy had his first physical: they all went together and talked about silly things and made the trip fun. Kanji himself had even joked about looking forward to being put in a big machine and spun around.

"…remember that day?" He tried to reminisce with Naoto, or at least get some reaction other than some stunned or stony silence. "Rise-chan did actually remember what she'd read on everyone's charts…"

A man and a woman, in their respective black suits, stepped into the clinic. The pair exchanged glances, subtle nods, and stalked towards the doctor and the patient on the other side of the curtain. The woman flashed him a smile as she passed. She had glossy, deep-gold hair in a French twist. Kanji tried to mark something, anything, _else_ that would identify her, because his instincts alerted him to an aura of dreadfulness around this woman that he knew less intensely from the Shadows infesting Inaba.

"Naoto Shirogane," pronounced the man in the black suit. "That's you, isn't it? I'm Agent Carcer, and this is my partner, Agent Darling. This your first time in New York?"

No reply. Kanji felt sure that Naoto wasn't even nodding.

"How was the flight?"

Finally, she spoke. "Turbulent."

"Mm-hmm." The sound of a clipboard being set down. "We do have some interesting stories, yes. We've got it pegged as a mass-hallucination, but you seem lucid enough."

"That," said Naoto, "was not a hallucination."

Kanji caught a little of the murmuring exchange that started up between the man and the doctor.

"…_Antipathy Syndrome… yes… early symptoms in this one…"_

"No," said Kanji, stepping off the gurney and yanking the curtain aside. "It's my fault, stupid thing I said right before comin' into the clinic. She'll be fine. You'll be fine, right?"

The man in the black suit, the woman in a black suit, and the woman in the white lab coat stared at him.

Naoto translated, "He insists, we're not sick. We're the only ones who can't get sick with this."

Agent Darling coughed politely. "I think you should leave that to the professionals to decide, don't you?"

"Perhaps you know of some professionals who can evaluate what else I have to say," said Naoto. "We call entities such as the one on the plane 'Shadows.' They used to be confined to an alternate dimension, but recently found a window—I should say, a door, because they're _coming_ through and not _looking_ through…"

At that, the man and the woman in their respective black suits exchanged glances without nodding. The woman in black ushered the woman in white out of her own clinic, as the man turned around and spoke into his watch.

"What's going on?" Kanji moved closer, protectively. "What'd you tell 'em?"

"Nothing they didn't already know, I hope."

When the man in the black suit was done, he addressed the wall. "Our researchers are in total agreement, that these Shadows are dangerous." He turned to face Kanji, and Naoto translated the next sentence simultaneously.

" 'According to many of the other passengers, someone matching your description ran _towards_ this Shadow. I wonder, why would anybody choose to do something like that?' _Don't tell them everything._" She controlled her expression carefully as she added that last part.

Kanji shrugged. "Thought I could take it on easy. I'm used to fightin'. Don't I look it?"

Naoto waited until he was done speaking, to translate.

"Used to fighting? Yes. So used to fighting that you'd apply your fighting skills to anything in life that you face, up to, and including, inter-dimensional entities of indeterminate substance…? Hmm..." He let that hang in the air, before turning to Naoto. "And you. Broke into the cockpit, and practically took over the captain's flying…"

* * *

_The Shadow gave a victorious caw, and a wound of lightning crackled in the air around her._ The main bolt grounded itself in Kanji's chest.

"Kanji!" Naoto grasped her gun, which had fallen under a seat, just as a 40-pound hatch door slammed into the side of the Shadow's head. The great bird slumped, shifting its amber eyes dizzily.

"_Null 'lectrical damage, bitch!"_

Kanji leaped over the seats to the fallen detective, one hand dragging the door behind him, the other reaching out to help her up—

The plane dipped to the other side, knocking Naoto into his arms. She steadied herself too quickly and exclaimed, "What is wrong with that pilot?"

"Can't we worry about that after we kill this thing?" Kanji lifted his new weapon up to gesture towards the Shadow.

Naoto blinked. "No. It will take too much time to explain now, but I need you to push that Shadow back into the other world. Can you do that? Alone? Without falling into the screen yourself?"

"It's kind of big—" Kanji began, then stopped and said, "Aight."

"I'll be in the cockpit, making it easier for you."

* * *

"I hoped to be able to calculate the correspondence of certain common physical laws, in both worlds, to that end."

Carcer raised an eyebrow. "You hoped."

"I neglected to consider the evidence that that the Shadow had not, in fact, breached the separation of the worlds by accident and remained in the hold of two opposing forces of movement..." She wasn't sure about this next part, but eschewed the disclaimers. "Rather, the Shadow bound itself to the aircraft, and took control."

Four more people in black suits entered, two rolling what looked like a thin silvery closet into the room, and the other two closing the blinds.

"So, how did you get the plane to land safely? If that _was_ your doing, not that we'll go any easier on you."

"My accomplice was able to defeat the Shadow on his own. I thought that we were merely lucky the first two strikes, but this Shadow had a particular vulnerability to physical attacks."

"As opposed to…?"

"I'd rather not say at this time." She turned to Kanji, then, and told him, "I should have trusted your instincts."

"Trust them now. My instincts don't like this," said Kanji, backing away, fists clenching. "It's bad enough with cops, takin' one look at you and deciding they're allowed to give you a hard time… but these people don't even look accountable to anyone..."

Naoto turned to the strangers and spoke slowly, as if making an extra effort to come off as calm. "We shouldn't stay too long, you understand. We're expected elsewhere."

Carcer opened the closet. It looked empty, but the emptiness was far bigger on the inside than should be possible from looking at it from the outside. Inside looked like a room the size of an elevator, with walls that gleaned in a way that suggested glass, and smokey, not-quite-inky, darkness beyond them.

"But we have so much to talk about," said Agent Darling. "Would you step inside, please?"

At their hesitation, Agent Carcer stepped into the room first and spread his arms benignly. Naoto and Kanji followed him. Agent Darling gave commands to the four others in the clinic to stand guard, before stepping in herself. The silver doors slid shut, and the walls came to life with whorls and ripples of color before settling into a blurred pattern of gray blocks. The way they blurred suggested that the blocks were flying up, or the room was moving down. It couldn't have been the last, Kanji thought, because he didn't feel the rising twinge in the pit of his stomach.

Naoto seemed to have a similar thought. "About those doors between dimensions..."

"We know, we know-- television screens, among other media," said Agent Carcer. "And this, _technically_, is one of those doors, but we have it under control."

"You can't be sure!" Naoto snapped.

Even Kanji jumped at little at the suddenness of her outburst. "What's wrong now?"

"Incapacitating fatigue, catatonia, skipping the seizures probably and going straight to aggression..." Agent Darling murmured to herself, then turned to Naoto. "You _do _have Antipathy Syndrome, don't you. You've lost your Persona. Too bad, we've done so many studies on fire, ice, electricity and wind manifesting abilities. Not so much on instant death. That would have been valuable."

"N-no! That is to say, I can't be sure of that either." Naoto looked wildly around at the walls. "I just... _don't... like... being underground!_ Leave me alone! Or do you want me to finally speak honestly!?"

The air around her seemed to burn blue.


	4. Rival Studios

**A/N:** A year already without another update?? How did that happen? I'd just taken a break to smooth over the path from point A to point B for a few days, and...

* * *

When Naoto came to, she was lying on her back. Under her palms and through her shirt, she could feel the material of the surface she lay on, its angles and grooves, and guessed that she lay on an operating table. A peculiar rattle filled the air, and her mind leapt to a vision of drills and saws clattering hungrily towards her body, red with rust— or, perhaps, dried blood. The operation would not be clean. It would not be painless. Her eyelids flew open in horror, and for a moment her horrors were confirmed at the sight of a surgical lamp— like a blazing, compound eye— above her. She held her breath.

And let it out slowly and soundlessly, when nothing happened. Her eyes adjusted to the glare.

"My God…" she breathed.

The walls and ceiling arched into a single dome, scaled by what looked like panels, or doors, colored silver. Slender loops of tubing covered the spaces on the wall between the doors, like vines, and an inky-black fluid bubbled through them. _Certainly not my secret base,_ she thought. _How did I get here?_

She remembered shouting that she hated being underground (Naoto sighed in shame at her loss of composure,) and then, at what she supposed was a nervous twitch, her lips kept moving. The ringing in her ears grew to such intensity that it drowned out all other sounds. A bright blue haze blossomed before her eyes, blinding her…

Naoto shifted, meaning to hop off the table, but found herself so exhausted that her very skin ached with the effort. _No. Get up. Get to a door. There are so many of them that you won't know which one to go through, but a closer look might give you something to go by before they come back…_

The doors seemed to have a symbol embossed on it, a flower of only five petals, but made masterfully intricate. She looked around and saw that all the doors around her were like it. There must have been dozens, at least. The cost and effort of construction was hardly conceivable. She leaned down to examine a flask.

Agent Carcer's voice echoed through the room. "I'm glad you admire our architecture, Mr. Shiroga…." The rest of his message became garbled, like the sound of air bubbles being blown under water, or a Shadow shocked into pursuit. Naoto stopped tilting the flask and stood up.

"Ahem. As I was say_glrblublaargh_—"

_Hmm,_ thought Naoto, as she ruffled the tubes and made the flasks rattle against each other. But the tubes wouldn't snap, and the flasks wouldn't shatter. The moment she paused, Carcer snapped, "STOP THAT."

"I'm in the TV World again, aren't I," said Naoto, recalling the grand marble castle's parapets, the rainbows, clouds, and giant beanstalks. Cost and effort was nothing, when thought formed reality. It could only happen there. _And he called me_ _Mr. Shirogane. _She noted. _They didn't do an examination. At least, Carcer let on something that should lead me to think that they didn't. _"You expect me to fight laboratory-grown Shadows? Or another persona-user? Is all your professionalism merely a front for some base gladiatorial entertainment, after all?"

"What a gratuitously violent imagination you have," replied Agent Carcer. It would be a travesty to make a mess of this place. This is an oasis of order in the chaotic desert of the collective subconscious. The spoke of the wheel of civilization. This is not the TV World, this is… the TV Station."

_And it's my fault we're trapped here. I had a plan, but if only I'd kept my wits about…_ "What did you do to Kanji?"

"We had your friend escorted back to the clinic, with strong suggestions for our good doctor to clear him for the next flight." His tone of voice told her it was, amusingly, not exactly a lie.

Naoto shook her head and replied, "You can't expect me to believe that you would you do that."

"Why wouldn't we? Because 'he knows too much'?" Carcer's laughed. "You said yourself, during your regression, that you thought yourself above such a 'motley gang of utter imbeciles—'"

Her heart sank. "No… No, I have never thought that!"

"—What would you care what we did to him?"

"That doesn't even sound like me! That…" The blinding aura and tinnitus started up again, with an underlying harmony that sounded almost like a voice, it said: _I am a Shadow, the true self._ "…is completely unreasonable. I'm not better than they are, I…" _am a murderer_, said another voice. _Kanji knows that. He knows me. You don't._ The room swirled back into view.

"Such rudeness. We medicated you, you know. It was an experimental, special and rare dose, but it saved not only your life, but your mind as well. Your very sense of being."

"Why?"

"As for your friends, well, they're just another mob," said Carcer, ignoring her question. "Think about this so-called virtue of friendship, how did you drive them to kill? Yes, you mentioned that, too. Why, you wore your darkness on your sleeve, I feel like I know you. Anyway, wasn't it that they just followed the only person who spoke as if he were sure? It's not likely that he was, but, in mobs, people will blind themselves with devotion and then allow themselves to be led by those blinded with power."

Naoto stayed silent.

"You shouldn't even have regressed," Carcer continued. "We've studied Persona-users. They're immune to fog and Antipathy Syndrome. I do not like anomalies. You must explain."

"It appears to me as if you've done your research. Perhaps you should be the one explaining it to me."

"We are doing our research, Mr. Shirogane." Agent Carcer answered, over Agent Darling's distant voice stating that something had been completed, and something else was commencing.

"What was that?" Naoto demanded, as the tiles crumbled and shifted beneath her feet. The walls vanished, and the full moon cast a green glow over the dunes of an endless desert.

* * *

"You'll rip the stitches even before they're all tied in!" a doctor was shouting, trying to shout louder than Kanji was. "Look at me! Look around you."

Kanji looked around a clinic. The clinic, a part of his mind insisted upon calling it, but it looked like the kitchen of his house. The rage was fading. "Naoto's… gotta fight it…"

"No, your friend ran out on you just as it got ugly, from what I've heard. Really, Kan-chan…" said a doctor. The doctor, Kanji's mind again insisted. Dr. Watanabe from the Inaba hospital, who made house calls to patch you up after a smackdown with the bikers, because you wouldn't go to the hospital.

"But ain't I supposed to be in some, thingy, uh, airport clinic…?" It sounded stupid. _But_, he thought, _everyone already thinks I am, so it's not like I have a reputation to keep up in that way._

This wasn't the same feeling as drawing a blank for something obvious to everyone else, though, or forgetting something he didn't even understand the first time. It felt like his thinking just wasn't straight anymore. Kanji had to say out loud what he knew, and make it a little more real. "I was in an airport just a second ago… we were supposed to go someplace, me and… Whose name was I just calling?"

"You might have sustained a concussion, too," said a concerned Dr. Watanabe. "Please, just this once, come to the hospital with me. You need proper care!"

Kanji wanted to snap at him for talking over the rest of his thoughts. No, Ma really wouldn't like that. He looked at the wound on his side. It didn't look like it had been stitched, but the wound looked splayed out and shiny, like an old inoculation scar. "Huh. You did a good job on that, Doc." It was too good a job. Stitches were supposed to have stitches, weren't they?

That sounded stupid. A specific kind of stupid, what was that… redundant, yes. He'd learned that word in a study session. Someone had taught him, someone he liked, so it had stuck. That someone, he had really, really liked… Maybe, a cute girl in his grade?

Kanji looked up to find that Dr. Watanabe had turned into a woman. A blur of glowing red eyes and black wavy hair flew an assault at Kanji. The woman's skeletal hand, stained and lumpy with gristle, raked at his throat. "Why do you flee from me?" She demanded, thin filaments of red glowing in the air around her.

"Sh—shadow!" Kanji choked.

"The trial is concluded!" She screamed. "You want the fog! I am not bound to any _land_! I live in the hearts and minds of every human being. Foolish boy. You cannot escape me."

Kanji snapped his head to the side to avoid inhaling the smell of decay, and found that he was tossing and turning on an airplane seat. A stewardess had shaken him awake. She was still leaning over him, her worried face framed by glossy auburn hair.

"Dream," muttered Kanji, squinting at the stewardess' nametag. "'M okay now. Really, um, Chihiro." I met a Chihiro once, he thought. Why does she look so much like her? "That means you can back off now."

"Oh, good," the stewardess Chihiro sighed, and swung her leg over so that she sat on Kanji's lap, facing him.

He yelped, "Hey, this ain't professional!"

She giggled and leaned in for a playful peck on the lips, and Kanji felt stupid again for thinking that she was a stewardess. The uniform was obviously that of a schoolgirl. How did he ever make that mistake? Something was off…

And then, still about this strange girl's clothing, everything was off. He hadn't touched them. At no point had she taken her hands off him.

Think, think, buy time to think. "We don't know each other that—"

She kissed him again.

"—well, and I like… mmph… someone else…"

"Really? Who's the lucky girl?"

"'S not…" a girl, he almost said, but thought that couldn't be right. "'S not fair to…" but the rest of what he thought to say became lost in the curtain of Chihiro's dark auburn hair.

Kanji lay back and relaxed, into the perfumed bedsheets, basking in the pink lights… Chihiro raked back her hair with her fingers, and made a move to take off her glasses.

"Don't," Kanji found himself saying, his lips forming a sly grin. "Keep them on." Especially now, he thought, and began to speak that thought aloud, "Especially now… that there's fog all over the damn place." He frowned, wondering why he thought that statement would be sexy.

"You wanted this fog! Why do you fight?" said the woman currently on the bed with him, red eyes glowing through Chihiro's glasses. But it wasn't Chihiro. Her face was just a skull with papery, mummified skin clinging onto it.

At first, Kanji's mind was too foggy to be horrified. "Hang on, how can we be… how can I be…? To a skeleton? That don't work." Horror began to creep in, and a part of him sensed it and leaped to action without letting him think, or else he'd be too horrified to do anything at all. He yanked the glasses off the skeleton's face, saying, "Actually, gimme those."

He held the too-small spectacles to his face (the skeletal figure vanished,) rolled off the bed, and ran towards the window, stumbling over a pair of shoes on the way. He recognized the view of Shirakawa Boulevard. "I haven't been here in months. Not since the school trip…" Or was the school trip still happening? "No… Hell no! It didn't happen this way! It isn't—won't ever—ever—happen this way!"

"Oh, be a man," said Agent Carcer's voice.

"See?" said the voice behind him. He turned and just saw an empty room, until he angled the glasses. Out of the glasses' focus, another girl, all voluptuous curves and golden ringlets, waited on the bed. She continued, "Even the pilot thinks you're being pathetic. Be a man, Kanji…"

"That voice." Pilot? But he was supposed to be on a plane. What was going on? The glasses slipped from his hand and clattered to the floor. The glasses were important. He stooped to pick them up.

"Leave them," the girl urged, and her voice had an edge, and harmonics. It was as if another identical voice screamed those words, high, and in rage— and yet another said it in a low and dangerous growl.

_In case she'd turned back into a monster, I don't want to see her,_ Kanji thought, sensibly. Then, strangely, the thought continued: _I don't _need_ to see her. It's not real!_

The glasses had landed beside the left shoe that Kanji had almost tripped over, on the way to the window. They were blue now. He could have sworn that the glasses weren't blue before. He also could have sworn that the shoes were a bigger size, and weren't platforms.

Evening, on the school trip. Those shoes, on the steel staircase. It meant someone was approaching, someone who made the space above his stomach feel bruised without even throwing a punch. Kanji's true thoughts began locking together. "Naoto." Be a man, Agent Carcer had said. "You think I'll sit cozy in a world someone else made for me, leaving my friend to whatever you sickos are doing… and call myself a man?!"

"You'd choose that over this! Over me!" said the active illusion.

"No. I make the choice I have to. The choice I want to— I — I want the choice I have to! That's what makes a man. I figured that out a long while ago, and you've all got some major damage comin' to ya, for tryin' to make me forget it." He stalked towards the mirror, balled his fist up, and shattered it barehanded.

* * *

"No," Agent Darling's eyes flicked left and right, quickening with panick. "No, this is _not_ funny, Carcer. The subject Tatsumi… is gone."

"What do you mean 'gone'? The moon arcanum has the most resilient hold. None of our subjects have ever broken through it."

"We haven't been in operation that long," Darling reminded him. "There's a first time for everything, especially in research. Maybe… Carcer, maybe if you would resist your commentary for once, the first time for this would never have—"

Agent Carcer held his hand up for silence. "Just find him. Wherever he is, just keep him away from the death elementalist."

"But he's gone! I told you, he's nowhere I could detect—" Agent Darling paused and pursed her lips before proposing, "What if this one severed Transmission?"

"Then he's as good as dead. No problem for us."

"How do you know?"

"This is one world, now. Our world. There is no other place he could possibly have gone. Absolutely none."

* * *

Kanji opened his eyes and leaped up at the same time, bristling with combat-readiness. He hit his head on something soft, but he hit it hard enough to have to sit down right away. It was then he noticed that everything around him was soft, and blue. It looked like a very narrow sitting room, or, juding from the glasses and bottles, a bar.

"Welcome," drawled a voice, a voice that somehow managed to be both oily and wheezy, "to the Velvet Room."

The owner of the voice was a hunchbacked man in a tuxedo, with bloodshot eyes that seemed ready to pop out, and a hooknose. No. More like a harpoon nose. At first Kanji thought the hunchback hung from the ceiling of this cushioned tunnel like a bat, but he was seated quite comfortably on a chair. Gravity had gone wrong.

"This ain't another kinky fantasy, is it," Kanji mumbled. "Backseat of an upside-down limo..."

The hunchback's expression didn't change, but he seemed to exude an aura of utter bewilderment. Eventually he said, "I am Igor. Please do calm yourself. You have removed yourself from that world, for now. Though I can offer no proof to set your mind at ease… I speak truthfully when I say The Velvet Room is a place between dreams and reality, mind and matter. We are not one of… them."

Kanji hesitated, but said at last, "Naw, I believe you. Somehow. But you're one creepy old geezer."

"Hmm… interesting. In you I see a powerful intuition. It has served you well, to shelter in the shadow of a Fool." Igor steepled his fingertips. "Still, I am afraid we cannot assist you as effectively as we have others before. This incursion of your world has come like a tidal wave from the sea, throwing the courses of great ships and humble rowboats alike, even sinking the greatest cities. You may be safe as long as you stay here--"

"I gotta get back. I have a friend in danger."

"Fortune is lost! You must understand, young man, we are all lost… The fog has engulfed even the clear windows of my cards." Igor's white-gloved hands gestured as if in supplication, and then dropped as if he'd thought of something. "And yet, you could not have brought yourself hither by coincidence. Yes… yes, let us see what we have to assist you."


	5. Inaba

Before opening her eyes, Rise reached over her futon and felt around for her glasses. Her fingertips found a wood plank, a wood plank, yet another wood plank, the edge of someone else's futon, someone else's face that would now be a little dustier from Rise's having run her hands over the floor first—

"Sorry!" Rise whispered, wincing. "Please go back to sleep!" Ayane let out a snort of complaint, turned over and did just that. The smaller girl's arm flopped over the pillow, giving Rise a view of the time, if she peered hard enough, from Ayane's apple-shaped wristwatch. 5:04 A.M.

She wasn't sleepy enough to go back to bed. Rise stood up, stretched, lifted the hem of her nightgown a bit and began to tread carefully between the other futons. She noticed that Yukiko's was already empty. It wasn't really too early to be up, then.

Rise took a towel and some fresh clothes from her cubby hole at the other end of the room, and made for the shower. At least she wouldn't have to wait very long to freshen up, unlike if she woke up later than somewhat-shower-hog Ai Ebihara.

There weren't so many refugees at the Amagi Inn that nobody could have their own room. Dojima-san had one, at least, in their makeshift sick bay. It was just that with Shadows about, even with the fortress-like architecture of the Inn, nobody really wanted to be alone.

At quarter past six, Rise emerged from the girls' room wearing one of her orange babydoll dresses, completing the other half of her pigtail-tying. As she stepped out into the hall, something fuzzy bumped into the back of her leg.

"Oh, hey! Were you waiting there all this time, Foxie?" Rise scratched the fox behind his ear like a dog, but he gave a condescending glare before trotting halfway down the hall. The Fox paused, trotted back into the edge of Inaba fog vision (which was almost all the way back to heeling,) sat, and waited.

"I've been here long enough to know where everything is, even if I do get a little clumsier when I can't see," Rise objected. "It's really sweet of you, but it's not so bad that I need a Seeing Eye… fox."

The Fox thrust its nose up as if to sniff her, and gave a small high bark.

"Oh, all right…"

The Fox trotted away again, this time with Rise following. At the junction between the stairs to the floor below and the hallway outside the sickrooms, the Fox turned and trotted up the hallway.

"Not there," Rise whispered at the Fox, "No, don't look at me like that again. You haven't been vaccinated. Someone might be allergic, and they're already sick—"

"H-Hello? Anyone there?" called a voice.

"No," said Rise, with a roll of her eyes.

"Oh, all right." The voice paused. "Heeey, wait just one minute...!" The form to whom that voice belonged, began to approach from up the hall. The Fox trotted ahead of it, towards Rise, and stood by her at the top of the stairs.

"Good morning, Adachi-san," said Rise, with a bow. "I only meant not to bother anyone. I was only passing through."

"I hope you're not planning anything devious, wandering the halls all alone like you are," said Adachi. His chest seemed to puff up a bit. "I am still technically a police officer, you know."

"I was going to see if the Amagis needed any help downstairs. Yukiko's already up."

Adachi approached her enough that they can see each other clearly. "Oh, you are so cute today! Take you long to pick that out?"

Rise shook her head no, as the Fox growled softly. She wondered if the Fox was as annoyed as she was, that Adachi-san was really so inconsiderate to make small talk like that, to pretend to forget that everything any one person owned right then, in that town, even safe in the Inn, had better fit in a single hand-carry.

"It shouldn't be like this, you kids working so hard just to survive," said Adachi. "We should be the ones taking care of you…"

Rise thought, for a fleeting moment, that he might have reached out, but the Fox began to growl even more loudly and bare his teeth.

"You'll wake the whole house!" Rise exclaimed, and excused herself to usher the Fox down the stairs.

Adachi began to say something to keep her, but was cut off by a stumble into the banister. By then, both Rise and the Fox had turned the second landing, out of earshot.

"What is it, huh?" Rise asked the Fox, as she strode across the entrance hall. "Someone forget to open the door to the atrium so you could do your business?"

But it wasn't that. The Fox trotted away from her, through the open atrium door, without waiting for her this time. Rise shrugged it off and made her way towards the kitchen.

* * *

"Granny—oh," said Rise, realizing who it was. "Excuse me, Kuroda-san. I didn't recognize you without the—" _mourning veil_, she almost said, "without my glasses."

"Your grandmother isn't feeling very well today," said Hisano, turning back to pour the last contents of the cooking pot into a bowl. "Don't you worry, it's just old bones beginning to give her trouble. It comes to all of us in time. I don't mind taking her cooking shift for now. After all, she's a faster and more thorough cleaner than I ever was, though we're supposed to team up for that here. Have some breakfast."

"But it's the last pack of ramen…" said Rise, hearing the kitchen door slide open and shut.

"You know what they say about early birds and growing children."

"Chie-chan's leading a grocery raid on Junes," said Yukiko, who had just entered. "We'll be fine, except for having to do without our glasses this morning."

"One for you, too," said Hisano to Yukiko, setting the bowls out.

"No, please, Kuroda-san, that's yours… I'll hold out for breakfast until they come back. Please, I don't even have that long walk to school every day to keep my weight down."

"You're a starved waif!"

"Not at all, really. I'll just sit with you both. My mother told me to take a break from helping her dust and mop." Yukiko took one of the tall chairs at the kitchen table.

"Who's gone with Chie-senpai?" Rise asked, as she helped Hisano into the other chair.

"Kou," answered Hisano, "and dear Nao-chan."

Rise was startled until she remembered that Saki Konishi's younger brother was named Naoki. She was confusing her thought with the memories of the dream…

Taking her place at the table, Rise leveled her chopsticks. "He's been doing that a lot. Kou, I mean. I think he likes her."

"Oh, I wouldn't know! He's usually a kind, helpful boy," said Yukiko. "I mean, they all are. Though, it would be nice for Chie-chan. I mean, if she likes him back. I don't think she minds, but I – I wouldn't say anything about that, because I don't know."

Rise gave a perplexed blink, chewed a noodle, and swallowed. "I didn't mean to put you on the spot at all, Senpai."

"You didn't," Yukiko chirped innocently, and then gasped, "Oh, no! You really didn't! I'm such a bad friend… It was supposed to be a secret…"

"A secret? A secret from me, too? I know I'm just the underclassman, but we three are the last remaining members of the Investigation Team in Inaba. I thought we'd trust each other more." Rise feigned a sulk, though she was immensely pleased.

Hisano hadn't known the younger girl long enough to tell, and peaceably changed the subject. "I thought I'd heard the water in the girls' room running long before you came by, Rise-chan. I'd hoped you were checking on poor Dojima, since I can't quite manage the stairs myself…"

"I only passed by the hall outside his room. Adachi-san seemed to be attending him."

"Good man. Your grandmother said that his wound's healed completely, but poor Dojima won't get up, or say one word, or anything. Now that the hospital's closed, I fear some lead or maybe shrapnel had gotten in after all and there's nothing we can do…" Hisano shook her head sadly. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to burden you both, it's just all this bad feeling…"

"Rise and I had caught Dojima-san trying to… you know," said Yukiko. "Chie was closer. She said there was only one shot, and when we looked the wound was like the bullet only just grazed him. He's unbelievably depressed— he lost his daughter, after all."

"But then again… Chie-senpai also said she saw a Persona— um," for Hisano's benefit, Rise described it, "a kind of misty form, floating in the air above Dojima before he collapsed. That's what the Persona look like to us, when we summon them, only it's different for each one. Chie-senpai saw a samurai."

"Sohei," Yukiko corrected. "It looked a little bit like a painting of Gochin no Tajima. It's Chie, she loves history. If there are warriors and weapons involved, you know."

"Everything's a misty form around here, now," objected Hisano. "I know we all wish to see these Personas come back and take action, like you say, but… when we see what we want, and it's not true, it does no good. None at all, whatever others may say."

Rise blew on her noodles to cool them, hoping that Yukiko wouldn't snap at the elder lady for implying that her best friend was deluded or lying, but instead Yukiko nodded sadly. "Adachi-san was even closer than Chie-chan. I mean, physically closer: he was the one wrestling the gun out of Dojima's hand. And he said he didn't see anything like a Persona." Yukiko sighed. "I don't think Adachi even believes us about Persona existing. Anyway, Persona powers come when you face your true self, don't they? Suicide doesn't do that. Suicide's running away… You can't be your true self if you're dead."

"Yet we all sacrifice a little of ourselves for honesty," said Hisano. "Our innocence, or ignorance, or pride... Our past selves must die so that we may grow up and then grow old in wisdom. Perhaps Dojima's true self is indeed a noble samurai, to show such willingness."

"I still don't see that it did any good for him or us," said Yukiko.

"Actually," Rise blurted, "I had this dream last night…"


	6. Team Kohai

"This is probably the first kind of good one I've had in a while. I was flying over these squares… tiles… black and white, like a chessboard. I zoomed past this woman with white hair, but long and glossy white hair, and her face was young-ish. She was floating, and there was this book and all these cards floating around her… all sorts of different Persona. She shouted things like, 'Withstand this!' and I turned to look at what she was attacking… and it was Teddie! He'd turned back into a Shadow!"

Yukiko gasped. "That's an awful dream!"

"It was a long one. I didn't know who to help, or even if I could, but I shouted for Teddie to hold on. I saw myself flying over this wrecked limousine that was lying nearby, and then everything went black.

"The next thing I knew, I was watching Kanji run through this dungeon with walls covered in black wormy things. I did what we always used to do: showed him where useful things were left lying around, or if a turn would lead shortly to a dead end. Oh, and if an enemy was passing by.

"It didn't have different floors, it just seemed to be this one huge maze. Kanji seemed to be running forever, and slowly too because he had to be cautious when an enemy passed by. One time we slipped into a room— there was this room, like a dome, still covered with black worms or something, and, I saw, I swear… another Persona-user.

"It was like he was imprisoned, or something. He kept warning Kanji to run away, because they were always being monitored. Of course it was too late, and these men in black suits barged in, and… they were Shadows.

"He got away, but unlike the Shadows here, it was like they all had some kind of alert system. They were all coming after Kanji. It was close, but I lead him to the door he was looking for. I felt such a strong presence coming from it, along with Naoto's presence. I kept asking Kanji if he was ready, and if he was sure he was ready… I kept thinking he wasn't, holding him back because he was all alone, but he kept saying 'I'm ready', and then he pointed out that if he didn't jump right in, then he would die by a bunch of little Shadows instead of by a Boss, and he didn't want that, so…

"I was expecting another dome with black worms at the walls. But, he entered a desert, with these wide open skies, and a green moon. The way behind us just disappeared. Kanji started calling out to Naoto, shouting for her… The shadows, of the sand dunes, I mean, it was like they'd try and move towards us when we weren't looking. Of course, I could kind of see everything around us, so they never caught up.

"Well, eventually, we found her. She found us, and was running towards us, but… Oh, Yukiko, she was crying!"

"Naoto never cries," said Yukiko. "Not the real Naoto in the real world anyway. This must really have been a dream, or a, a Shadow of her?"

Rise shook her head, positive that it wasn't, but when she'd thought about it a bit… "I don't know. Naoto's hands looked like they'd been whipped with barbed wire, and she was rambling something about a monster being on her tail, and a seal breaking, and it was all her fault. She totally had my attention, and Kanji's too, and we were trying to make sense of it. I remembered the dune shadows too late, but… you remember those white cards she summons? Something like that was happening around her, but without the cards, and more out of control like tiny fireworks. The light kept the dunes back.

"Even without his Persona, Kanji was ready to fight the monster that was chasing Naoto, until he saw it." Rise paused to shudder. "We saw the monster's eyes first, like pools of lava. It was running towards us on all fours, like a dog, if a dog had melted ears and a warped snout and skin rotting off of its ribs. Also, it was… kind of… big."

"I'm still waiting for the good part of this dream," said Hisano.

"It ate us. I woke up, happy that I was still alive, even in this miserable wreck of a world. That's the good part," said Rise.

Hisano and Yukiko were left speechless and staring.

"Just kidding." Rise forced a laugh and continued, "The desert background started to flicker, like, a faulty signal, and then we really were back in a dome-shaped room… surrounded by Shadows that were shaped like people. Naoto was all like, 'Where are the others?! What do you do to them?!' meaning the Persona-users, and Kanji kept trying to pull her in close to him because he had this, this bomb made out of crystals or something…

"Actually, where did he get that? Ooh, I missed something important! I can't remember anymore, but I think it had something to do with the wrecked limo…

"No, wait, it wasn't a bomb. It was like a teleportal than needed all three of us to concentrate to make it work. But Naoto took her gun—"

"Oh, no." Yukiko covered her face as if that would block what she was seeing in her mind, and understanding why Rise was telling them this in the first place.

"—pointed it at the men in black suits, and her face went blank like she was hypnotized or enervated or something. She didn't shoot them. She turned her own gun on herself. Right in her mouth, so what she said came out like '_Puh… hffo… nga_...'

"And then, I don't know, so many things happened at the same time— Yamato Takeru flew around, and the cards made out of light came back and burned the men in black suits away, and then all three of us had made a bridge with our mind and the crystal so that the light from the crystal burned the dome-shaped room away, and then we were all falling into a city.

"Actually, not all of us. I sometimes felt like I wasn't all there, like I was a camera in a movie. When they fell, I couldn't reach for them because I had no hands. I can't even say I'd become the wind, it was more like I'd become a bit of space. So they still had bodies, and they were falling, and I was floating away…"

"Falling from what?" asked Hisano.

"The dome-shaped room… on the space ship… above New York City." Rise sighed. "I hope I really saw Yamato Takeru catch them both before they hit the ground… It all felt so much more real than this foggy everyday… I had my powers back, and I was helping my friends, and we were together!"

Distant and muffled, they heard metal cans clank against each other, the rolling and clattering of a grocery cart, and Chie's voice shouting out instructions and greetings.

"So I guess that _is_ a good _dream_," said Yukiko to Rise, kindly. She slid off the chair and said, "But we can't spend much longer wondering if it was anything more than that. We all have a lot to do today."

"Yeah, I guess you're right," said Rise. At Hisano's urging, Rise finished her ramen, and then went to join the others at the entrance hall.


End file.
